Edline Merger Makes Headlines

K-12 industry leaders and executives are starting to take serious note of Blackboard and our giant push into the market.

With the addition of Edline to the Blackboard family, we have increased our K-12 community of practice and now provide a complete end-to-end solution set. Despite being known as a “higher education company” we now have more clients in K-12 than postsecondary. Who knew?

Brett Frazier, SVP of sales, and Rick Noble, president of Edline, recently sat down with Tom Vander Ark (of GettingSmart.com and a former BbWorld keynoter) to discuss our new K-12 position, Edline and the ever-changing market.

Brett noted, “Our strategy is driven by a view of an active consumer. This type of consumer has changed many industries from banks to bookstores and is beginning to change expectations for schools.”

And expectations are changing in K-12 as well as Rick pointed out, “The younger kids command the market – they are Facebook users, twitter users – they have very high expectations of what you can do on the web. Parents can communicate with the teacher and look at grades, homework, calendars – be really involved in the student’s education.”

The Edline “learning community management system” (LCMS) integrates learning management and notification capabilities. It’s not a full LMS but it does have an interesting suite of communication tools.

Tom summed it up well: “Edline strikes an interesting balance with a set of school tools mostly likely to appeal to principals. Stay tuned. Blackboard intends to power a lot of K-12 learning.”